


Mortality

by mistr3ssquickly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: A cure for what ails you, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 00:16:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13155099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistr3ssquickly/pseuds/mistr3ssquickly
Summary: Han wears the history of his adventures like a tapestry across his skin.  He's a fighter, a survivor.  And now, lying in his bunk aboard theFalcon,Han Solo is dying.(This is not a serious story.  Don't be confused.)





	Mortality

Mortality

Han wears the history of his adventures like a tapestry across his skin, in the thin white tears that tell time-worn tales of knife-fights only barely won, jagged starbursts of knotted tissue that whisper the memory of blaster-shots hitting too close to home for comfort. Calluses and discolorations and a limp that surfaces whenever they’re somewhere cold and damp that recall tales he’s told with a crooked grin lighting his face of the measures he’s had to take in order to survive, the strength and power and resilience Leia has seen from him with her own eyes countless times over the years, the same stubborn will to live that has saved her life, and Luke’s, more often than she would like to admit, their close scrapes with death turning her stomach whenever she considers them too closely.

He’s a fighter, Han Solo is. A survivor.

And now, lying before Leia in his bunk aboard the _Falcon,_ Han is dying.

His skin is pale and slick with sweat, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, unfocused when Leia sits down at his side and swipes a damp cloth across his brow and down his cheeks, following the line of his neck to the collar of his tunic, unbuttoned and twisted where he’s tossed and turned in discomfort. She can feel the heat of him coming through the blankets, through the linen of her trousers, and when he breathes his throat rattles, his face flushing crimson as he coughs.

“You’re going to be fine,” she tells him, a repetition of her initial evaluation of the situation, and just as he answered her the first time, Han closes his eyes and chuckles, the sound raspy, raw.

“Keep tellin’ yourself that,” he says, a coughing fit taking him before he opens his eyes to look at her once again. “Don’t need you feelin’ sorry for me, anyway.”

She doesn’t feel sorry for him -- well, she _does,_ but not as much as he clearly thinks she should -- and she rolls her eyes to let him know he’s being ridiculous, but he’s distracted with blowing his nose into a handkerchief and misses the gesture. Probably for the better.

“You have a _cold,_ Han,” she tells him. “No one’s ever died from a cold. Least of all you.”

Han frowns at her and sniffles pointedly, scrubbing his handkerchief over his nose hard enough to make it go angry red. “Feels like more’n a cold to me,” he grumbles.

Leia rolls her eyes again, and this time Han’s paying attention well enough to see it. “You have a low-grade fever, congestion, and a cough,” she tells him. “I’ve seen you take blaster-fire and whine less. You’ve flown the _Falcon_ with broken bones. You weathered carbon sickness with less drama than you’re --”

“So I know my pain threshold from experience,” Han says, rolling over so he’s facing away from her, the bunk shaking as he rolls his pillow in half to prop his head up, sniffling wetly once he’s settled. “I’m _tellin’_ you, this is --”

“Have you taken any painkillers?” Leia interrupts, leaning in to swipe the damp cloth in her hand down the back of Han’s neck. “Anything for the fever?”

A beat of silence answers her. Then: “No. Chewie said I didn’t need it.”

He’s not wrong, biologically speaking, the benefits of letting a low-grade fever burn out whatever virus Han’s managed to contract well-known and time-tested. But.

“I’ll get you some,” Leia says. Han starts to object, so she adds, “And you _will_ take them. Without argument.”

She pushes herself to her feet, ignoring what sounds for all the world like _you wanna bet on that_ mumbled into Han’s pillow in favor of retrieving a single dose of analgesic from the first aid kit Han keeps in his quarters and a pouch of water, the thought that he’s probably not hydrating himself properly adding to her growing ire as she returns to his side.

“Here,” she says. “Take these, drink this.”

Han coughs weakly and pushes himself up to take the pills and water, blowing his nose again before flopping back down with a whine-tinged sigh. “‘M cold,” he complains, curling in on himself.

“I’m sure you are,” Leia says.

“Stay with me?” Han says, turning his head just enough to look at her over his shoulder, no guile in his expression, maybe a little bit of embarrassment, as if he’s aware, under the layers of self-pity, that he’s being ridiculous.

Leia reaches over to run her hand through his hair. “Finish your water,” she says, “then yes, I’ll stay.”

Han obeys without another word, coughing weakly as Leia slips under the blankets at his back, her arm draped over his belly.

\---

She finds Luke some hours later sitting under what’s become his favored tree on their latest hidden base, but instead of sitting with his legs folded before him and hands loosely joined together, a pose he learned while he was training on Dagobah and has been using for his exercises ever since, he's got his knees curled up to his chest, his chin resting on them, the smooth trunk of the tree aligned with the outward curve of his spine. His eyes are closed when she approaches, but he cracks one open when he hears her footsteps, opening the other one as well when he sees it’s her, his expression warming into a sad smile, aging him beyond his actual years.

“I don’t know much about the Jedi,” he says as she settles beside him, the plush grasses surprisingly comfortable, almost as soft as the worn mattress of Han’s bunk was, but firmer, allowing her to sit in a posture that eases the muscles complaining from her impromptu nap, “but I do know that when they die, they become one with the Force. Both in body and spirit.” He looks away, across the rolling expanse of hills, the young trees growing over what was obliterated by forest fires decades before. “I find that comforting. To see death as the next step in the journey, leaving behind nothing for the people I love to mourn. Or to burn. To bury.”

Leia’s breath catches in her throat. Luke has never been much for talking about the death of his aunt and uncle at the hands of the Empire, and even less interested in discussing the burial he gave his father -- _their_ father -- on Endor’s moon, but she knows enough, knows that he’s got a scar on his left leg where he stumbled and cut himself on the smoking ruins of his childhood home as he lay his aunt and uncle to rest in the crypt below their home compound, helped him tend to the burns he got stoking the funeral pyre he built for Vader, secreted away amongst the trees like a thief. The thought that he’s been alone here, thinking about death, about Obi-wan and Yoda, perhaps even his childhood friend Biggs, lost in the Battle at Yavin IV, none of them leaving behind a body to bury, no way for Luke to have closure, is heartbreaking.

“I wonder if it’ll be like that for me, when I go,” he says, drawing Leia from her thoughts, “or if I’m still too new to the training. If you have to be a master to become one with the Force when you die.”

Leia reaches out and strokes the length of his shin with her fingertips, offering him a soft smile when he looks at her. “That's not something you'll have to worry about for a very long time,” she says.

“I don't know,” Luke says. “I used to think I'd live forever, but --”

Leia moves her hand higher to lace her fingers with Luke’s, words of comfort ready on her tongue, but before she can voice them, Luke sniffles, reaching into his pocket with his free hand for a rumpled tissue, which he uses to blow his nose, and it’s all Leia can do to keep her tone even as she says, “Oh don’t tell me _you’re_ sick, too.”

Luke coughs and blows his nose again. “Too?” he croaks.

Leia nods. “Yes. I just came from Han’s bunk. He’s got a cold.”

“Oh.”

“He’s _convinced_ he’s dying,” Leia tells him. “Over a headcold. Which I'm _sure_ you're smart enough to know is not the case. For _either_ of you.”

Luke sniffles. “It feels more serious than just a cold,” he says, his tone tentatively petulant. 

“And I’m sure you’re doing your body no favors, sitting out here like this instead of lying down in your bunk,” Leia says. “Have you taken anything for your symptoms? Gone to Medical for a check-up?”

Luke’s ears go pink. “Yes,” he says. “They said it’s just a cold, like you said. Not even bad enough to take anything for the fever. I thought maybe I could treat it through the Force, so I came out here to meditate.” Another sniffle, this one punctuated with a cough. “It didn’t work.”

Says the man who’s been careful never to use his Force gift for frivolity over all the years he’s known about it. Leia curls her fingers tight where they’re joined around Luke’s and tugs, pulling him with no small difficulty to his feet.

“Come on,” she says. “Bedrest and water. You’ll be fine.”

“All right,” Luke says, his tone heavy with doubt. He hesitates when she tugs on him, his usual stubbornness just as unwelcome as ever.

“Come _on,”_ she says, again, pulling.

“You shouldn’t be too close to me,” Luke says, looking down at their joined hands with a worried frown. “I don’t want you to catch what I have.”

Leia sighs. “I just spent the last hour taking care of Han,” she tells him. “If I’m going to get it, I’m going to get it.”

“Maybe you could go to Medical, get them to give you something to prevent it,” Luke says. Then, when she sighs again and gives him a Look, he adds: “Really, Leia, it’s not --”

_“It’s just a headcold,”_ Leia says, tightening her grip and pulling Luke to her, hard enough that he stumbles, falling into step at her side. “Luke, seriously, you were less dramatic about nearly freezing to death on Hoth, why is this _such_ a --”

“Because this feels worse,” Luke says, finally losing the Jedi calm he’s been trying to maintain, his voice taking on a higher pitch as he does, the whining Han used to tease him about mercilessly seeping into his tone. “I ache all over and I can’t breathe and my throat hurts and it’s _awful.”_

His lower lip’s sticking out in the beginnings of an honest-to-god _pout_ when Leia looks at him, and she doesn’t _mean_ to laugh at him, really, but it’s just too much for her, the big bad Jedi knight everyone in the Alliance has come to recognize and respect reduced to pouting like a little boy over a little congestion and a fever.

“You’ll feel better once you’ve gone to bed,” she says. “Now come on. You’ve been out here arguing with me long enough.”

\---

A week later, Han has made a full recovery and is insufferable for it, dragging Luke out to drink with him to celebrate their “miraculous” escape from the jaws of certain death, and Luke goes with him, either because he knows Han’ll drag him out one way or another, or because he’s just as pleased as Han that he didn’t actually die from his ailment. Leia doesn’t know and, frankly, isn’t interested in finding out, shoo’ing both men away from her bunk with little more than a glare when they come by to bother her, interrupting the sleep she’d been _trying_ to enjoy.

“Thought you said it wasn’t that bad, Your Worship,” Han gloats, taking far more joy in her misery than he should, considering how unhappy he was when he was sick, nevermind how short Leia’s temper gets when she’s under the weather.

“It’s _not,”_ she informs him, “but I’m still hardly in any state to be going out drinking. I have responsibilities. I need to be as rested as I can be to see to them.”

“Have you been to Medical?” Luke says, looking at her with concern written all over his face.

“No, and I’m not going to go, either,” Leia says. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Lookin’ for company in that bed?” Han says, waggling his eyebrows at her, flirting more on reflex than out of any _actual_ desire to join her in her sickbed, Leia is sure. She's seen her reflection lately, knows how bad she looks, her nose raw red and eyes puffy, her hair a mess where she's not bothered to comb it until she absolutely _has_ to. Nothing anyone would find attractive, no matter how desperate they might be.

“I thought you weren't interested in dying,” Leia counters, the rawness in her throat granting her tone a level of threatening she wishes she could use on command. Han just smirks at her for it, which would give her the push she needs to shove him physically out of her doorway, but Luke saves her the effort, tugging Han out of range and asking if she needs anything. 

“Peace and quiet and _rest,”_ she tells him. “It's just a cold.”

“You'll contact us if you change your mind, though, right?” Luke says, all big blue eyes and adoring worry, which she'd appreciate if she weren't so keen on him going away so she can lie down.

“I will,” she promises, for all that she knows how useless he'll be after he's been drinking, placing Chewbacca higher on her list to call if she needs someone. Which she _won't._

“All right. Feel better,” Luke says, pulling Han fully free of her door.

“Don't die,” Han adds, still grinning. 

Leia kicks her door closed behind them. _“It's just a cold,”_ she yells, half-hoping they hear her, half-hoping they don't, the coughing fit that seizes her lasting all the way over to her bunk, the blankets a welcome comfort as she flops down and tugs them up to her ears, aching and miserable as she sinks into a much-needed sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Author’s musings:_  
Hello from the world of getting sick over the last full work-week before the holidays and sharing my cold with my partner, resulting in tons of aching and sneezing and coughing a little bit of fun fiction on the side now that I’m feeling better. I’m in Luke and Han’s camp on this one: I can take broken bones and stitches and other serious injury like a champ, but the minute I can’t breathe properly and my head starts to hurt, I’m the whiniest bastard on the planet. My only consolation is that my partner is, too, so we put up with each other’s whining when a cold starts to make its rounds through the house and try really hard not to judge each other for our whining. Too much, anyway.

Happy Holidays to all who celebrate something this time of year! I wish you all the best of health and happiness in the years to come.

P.S. I saw VIII and haven’t yet decided how I feel about it. Love to hear your thoughts on it, if you’d like to share. Or your thoughts on the story. Or both. Whichever you please.


End file.
